American Legion Baseball District: Berryhill wins; Sanford eliminated

By the Midland Daily News

Published 3:00 am, Saturday, July 23, 2011

GLADWIN — Colton Loomis pitched a complete game four-hitter Friday to lead Berryhill Post 165 over Gladwin Post 171 7-3 in the opening round of the American Legion Baseball double-elimination district tournament at Gladwin High School.

Loomis struck out 14 and allowed two earned runs, as Berryhill advanced to today’s 10 a.m. winners’ bracket final against Mount Pleasant.

“He is a workhorse,” Berryhill manager Steve Cronkright said of Loomis.

Trailing 2-1, Berryhill went ahead for good with three runs in the bottom of the fourth. Josh Ellis hit a sacrifice fly and Alex Goodwin hit a two-run single for a 4-2 lead.

Alex Albrecht hit a two-run single and Adam Pijaszek added a sacrifice fly to pad the lead to 7-2 in the sixth.

Goodwin and Albrecht both went 2-for-3, and Lars Cronkright had an RBI single for Berryhill.

“We played with a little more intensity (today),” Steve Cronkright said. “We still aren’t hitting great, but we took advantage of what they gave us. It’s all stuff we’ll grow from, and we’ve just got to keep hitting the ball. We’ll be fine.”

Jake Gross took the loss for Gladwin.

Gladwin’s Mike Lyons had two hit and a run batted in. Trevor Karbowski doubled and singled with two RBIs.

“Gladwin’s got a nice team,” Cronkright said.

“We played pretty well against Berryhill,” said Gladwin manager Terry Brokoff. “(But) we gave up several walks and made a couple untimely errors that led to several runs for Berryhill.”

Meanwhile, Mount Pleasant Post 110 beat Sanford 4-2 in the other first-round game, and Gladwin then eliminated Sanford with a 9-1 win in the losers’ bracket.

At 1 p.m. today, Gladwin plays the loser of the Berryhill/Mount Pleasant game. If Gladwin wins that game, it would play at 4 p.m. against the Berryhill/Mount Pleasant winner in the championship game. But if Gladwin loses, the championship game would be played at 1 p.m. Sunday because no team is allowed to play three games in one day.